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THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 



THE SPIRIT OF 
LAFAYETTE 



BY 

JAMES MOTT HALLOWELL 

I* 

Former Assistant Attorney-General 
of Massac husettg 




Garden City New Yoek 

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 

1918 



31^13 



Copyright, 1918, by 
DOTJBLEDAY, PaGE & CoMPANT 

All rights reserved, including thai of 

translation into foreign languages, 

including the Scandinavian 



WAR -2 1918 
©GI,A492429 



DEDICATED TO 

THE AMERICAN SOLDIER IN FRANCE 

WHO HAS ANSWERED THE 

CALL OF LAFAYETTE 



THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 



The Spirit of Lafayette 



A FEW years after the signing of the 
Declaration of Independence a hostile 
Mohawk chief met in council a representa- 
tive of the young American republics for 
the purpose of concluding a treaty of 
peace. The representative of young democ- 
racy was a soldier of France, the Marquis 
de Lafayette. Primitive America on the 
one hand, ancient Europe on the other! 
"Father," said the Indian, "we have heard 
thy voice and we rejoice that thou hast 
visited thy children to give to them good 
and necessary advice. Thou hast said 
that we have done wrong in opening our 
8 



4 THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 

ears to wicked men, and closing our hearts 
to thy counsels. Father, it is all true; we 
have left the good path; we have wandered 
away from it and have been enveloped in a 
black cloud. We have now returned that 
thou mayest find in us good and faithful 
children. We rejoice to hear thy voice 
among us. It seems that the Great Spirit 
has directed thy footsteps to this council 
of friendship to smoke the calumet of 
peace and fellowship with thy long-lost 
children." 

The Indian warrior's vision was true in 
a greater sense than he knew. Through 
him the soul of America spoke to the soul 
of Europe, and it spoke of the fellowship of 
man. Perhaps the footsteps of this soldier 
of France were indeed directed by a high 
Providence. Perhaps he was himself a 
message from the infinite. I love, for my 
own part, to believe that at his birth there 



THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 5 

appeared in this world an eternal and 
mighty spirit, a spirit perhaps from another 
age or sphere. Who knows? Why not? 
Who is there can look into the great un- 
known, the vast and impenetrable depths 
of the heavens, and say that this could not 
be, and was not so? How else explain this 
child of a French monarchy, brought up 
among the titled nobility of France, who 
amidst such conditions grew to manhood — 
the devotee of freedom and the ever-loyal 
champion of democracy? 

Lafayette was born on September 6, 
1757, at the Chateau de Chavagnac in the 
province of Auvergne in the monarchy of 
France. Two months before his birth his 
father was killed in battle. Left to the 
sole guidance of an indulgent mother, sur- 
rounded by flattering attendants and the 
enervating influences of wealth and noble 
birth, he faced the empty and useless life 



6 THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 

of a mere titled, wealthy aristocrat. What 
saved him? To add to these inauspicious 
beginnings, he v/as, at the age of twelve, 
sent to Paris to the College du Plessis 
where his rank and wealth introduced him 
to all the gaieties and dissipations of ex- 
clusive fashionable Parisian society. His 
mother died when he was but thirteen, 
leaving him in the full possession of large 
and valuable estates, the absolute master 
of his own destiny, and subject to the in- 
dulgences and corruptions of one of the 
most notorious courts of all Europe. Of a 
winning personality, he was appointed one 
of the King's pages, a position much 
coveted by the princes and nobles of the 
kingdom. He was also enrolled in the 
King's Regiment of Mousquetaires, and 
at the age of fifteen through the favour of 
the Queen obtained a commission, an 
honour conferred as a mark of especial 



THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 7 

royal regard. He was married at the age 
of sixteen, and his young wife was a daugh- 
ter of the aristocratic house of Noailles, 
one of the most powerful and influential 
families of the French court. What more 
profoundly barren soil could be chosen to 
produce the self-denying fighter for lib- 
erty, the clean-minded democrat, La- 
fayette? 

A significant incident is told of his 
early life. Shortly after his marriage, his 
wife's family sought for him an honorary 
position in the household of the Count 
de Provenge, afterward Louis XVIII 
King of France. Lafayette did not wish 
the appointment. The spirit of Lafayette, 
the democrat, was already restive under 
royal authority. To prevent the honour 
being thrust upon him, and in order at the 
same time not to offend his family by re- 
fusing to accept, he sought an opportunity 



8 THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 

to make himself so obnoxious to the Count 
that the arrangement could not go through. 
The chance offered itself at a masked ball 
where the Count appeared in a disguise 
which was instantly penetrated by La- 
fayette. Making himself known, he lost 
no time in engaging in conversation the 
royal personage, who thought himself un- 
known, and with a freedom and boldness 
bordering upon discourtesy, he gave voice 
to facts and opinions which he knew would 
be obnoxious to his listener's ear. The 
future King of France had little hesitation 
in making up his mind that the young 
Marquis would be a refractory attache, 
and declined to make the requested ap- 
pointment. 

Providence, or his own spirit, had saved 
Lafayette for democracy. 



II 

In 1775 in the new western hemisphere 
democracy was born to the modern world. 

"By the rude bridge that arched the flood. 
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled. 

Here once the embattled farmers stood 

And fired the shot heard 'round the world." 

Across the vast Atlantic rolled its echoes. 
Across a trackless sea, across the lands of 
France, up through the great White Ways 
of Paris it resounded. It knocked against 
the palace doors of the King of France. 
On through the flippant gibe, the careless 
laugh, the carousing and the din of the 
royal court, it reached and touched the 
spirit of Lafayette. 



10 THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 

What was the strange tale that came to 
him from the New World? Was it a tale 
of liberty triumphant and conquering, a 
tale of success, a tale to touch the imagina- 
tion of a soldier through the glory of a 
winning cause? Far from it. After a 
brief temporary success in Massachusetts 
the cause of the newly-born confederated 
American republics seemed to be tottering 
upon the brink of total destruction. The 
rout of the Americans at Brooklyn and 
the consequent abandonment of Long 
Island was followed by their evacuation of 
New York City. The American army was 
becoming demoralized. The militia were 
impatient to return home, were disobedient 
to orders, and were deserting in large 
numbers — it is said "by half and even by 
whole regiments." Then followed the 
Americans' defeat at White Plains, the 
surrender of Fort Washington, the evacua- 



THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 11 

tion of Fort Lee, and the steady dishearten- 
ing of the American forces. The ineffec- 
tual attempts to increase the militia, the 
indisposition of the inhabitants to farther 
resistance, the retreat of General Washing- 
ton through New Jersey at the head of less 
than three thousand men, poorly armed, 
almost without tents, blankets, or provi- 
sions, discouraged by constant reverses, 
many of them half-clad and barefooted in 
the cold of November and December, 
passing through a desponding country and 
pursued by a numerous, well-appointed, 
and victorious army — all these events 
made liberty at this time indeed 

**A wretched soul bruised with adversity.'* 

It was at this stage of the conflict that 
Lafayette determined to cross the Atlantic 
and take up the cause of the thirteen little 
republics. Benjamin Franklin, one of 



12 THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 

America's two representatives in France, 
who at first had welcomed this offer of 
assistance, upon learning of the continued 
American reverses, and almost despairing 
of the success of the cause, is reported 
honourably to have endeavoured to dis- 
suade the Marquis from carrying his design 
into execution. Franklin and Silas Deane, 
the other American representative in 
France, told him they were unable to ob- 
tain a vessel for his passage. France was 
then at peace, and the King of France for- 
bade his departure. Under the laws of 
France he risked the confiscation of all his 
property, as well as capture on the high 
seas. There was no winning cause to lure 
him, merely thirteen little newly-born re- 
publics struggling for a principle, fighting 
for democracy — a weak, bedraggled, and 
dispirited democracy, a democracy half- 
clad and poverty stricken, a barefooted. 



THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 13 

half-naked democracy that was very 
nearly down and out. 

"Now," he replied to Franklin and 
Deane, "is precisely the moment to serve 
your cause; the more people are dis- 
couraged, the greater utility will result from 
my departure; and if you cannot furnish 
me with a vessel, I shall charter one at my 
own expense to convey your despatches 
and my person to the shores of America." 

In a Paris paper of that year, there 
appears the following item: 

Paris, April 4, 1777. 

One of the richest of our young nobility, the 
Marquis de Lafayette, a relation of the Duke de 
Noailles, between nineteen and twenty years of 
age, has at his own expense hired a vessel and 
provided everything necessary for a voyage to 
America, with two oflScers of his acquaintance. He 
set out last week, having told his lady and family 
that he was going to Italy. He is to serve as 
Major-General in the American army. 



in 

Lafayette arrived in America in June, 
1777, and at once plunged into the struggle. 
He refused an active command at first, 
preferring to serve in a more humble 
capacity until accustomed to American 
troops. In the Battle of Brandywine, 
only some forty days after his arrival, he 
received a wound from a musket ball — a 
wound suflScient to keep him in bed for 
six weeks. This battle was a defeat for the 
American forces and was followed by the 
fall of the City of Philadelphia. Wounds 
and defeat seem, however, to have acted 
only as a stimulus, and in December, 1777, 
as a reward for intrepid and brilliant ser- 
vice, he was given the command of a 
U 



THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 15 

division of the American army. He was 
then twenty years of age. 

Then followed four years of active 
service under General Washington, broken 
only by a temporary return to France in 
1779 on a diplomatic mission. Gentle 
and courteous, yet apparently insensible 
to fear, his spirit was an inspiration. At 
the Battle of Monmouth the enemy, dur- 
ing a lull, observed a general oflScer in the 
service of the Americans advancing into 
the danger zone, with some other officers 
and men, to reconnoitre the enemy's 
position. An aide-de-camp fell, struck 
by a ball, and all but the general fled 
precipitately. They saw the latter, al- 
though under the fire of a battery, lean 
to assist the stricken aide, and finding that 
all was ended turn and slowly rejoin the 
others. The British commander. General 
Clinton, ordered his men not to fire; and 



16 THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 

the chivalry of this Englishman proba- 
bly saved the American officer's life. It 
was Lafayette. 

In 1780 he asked leave to take a position 
in the Southern Department where the 
situation of the American army is de- 
scribed in a letter to Lafayette by General 
Greene, then commanding the division. 

"It is now within a few days of the time 
when you shall be with me. Were you 
to arrive you would find a few ragged, half- 
starved troops in the wilderness, destitute 
of everything necessary for either the com- 
fort or convenience of soldiers. . . . 
The country is almost laid waste and the 
inhabitants plunder one another with little 
less than savage fury. We live from hand 
to mouth, and have nothing to subsist 
on but what we collect with armed parties. 
. . . I fear this department is to be 
the great Serbonian bog to the American 



THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 17 

armies and particularly to the general 
officers." 

The vision of a Serbonian bog acted 
only as a magnet, and Lafayette started 
to join Greene. On his way, however, he 
was recalled by the commander-in-chief. 
General Washington, to take command 
of an expedition against Benedict Arnold, 
the traitor, now a brigadier-general in the 
enemy's army, who was marching into 
Virginia and with revengeful fury carrying 
fire and sword wherever he went. La- 
fayette was dispatched against him with 
specific orders that if Arnold surrendered 
there should be no stipulation made for 
his safety, and at the same time forbidding 
the slightest injury to his person; — it being 
the purpose of Washington, never how- 
ever fulfilled, to bring Arnold to public 
punishment according to the rules and 
regulations of the army. 



18 THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 

Lafayette's command seems to have 
been no better than Greene's. In a letter 
to Greene he describes his men as being in 
a condition of "shocking nakedness." 
Even the officers were destitute of money, 
clothing, and everything that could con- 
tribute to cleanliness and comfort. As 
for the men, they were poorly fed, their 
shoes worn out, without tents, and des- 
titute of almost any protection from the 
inclemency of the weather. Some of his 
officers assured the Marquis that his com- 
mand would speedily be reduced one- 
half by desertion, — and as a matter of fact 
thirteen out of one company deserted in a 
single day. A nauseous and contagious 
disease, generally produced by a want of 
cleanliness, overspread nearly the entire 
command. In consequence of these diffi- 
culties, Arnold escaped, but Lafayette 
forced his retreat. 



THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 19 

The military genius of George Washing- 
ton at last turned the tide of war. In 
October, 1781, he had the enemy's troops 
under Cornwallis cornered at Yorktown. 
In the course of the siege it became neces- 
sary to capture a certain redoubt possessed 
by the enemy. Washington determined to 
carry it with the bayonet, and appointed 
Lafayette to conduct the charge. The 
American infantry advanced with irresist- 
ible power, relying entirely upon their 
bayonets, and carried the redoubt by 
assault. 

Shortly afterward Cornwallis surrender- 
ed his entire army to Washington, and the 
last battle of the American Revolution 
had been fought. In November, 1781, 
the confederated republics having won, 
Lafayette returned to France. 

Washington and Lafayette ! The Amer- 
ican and the Frenchman. Great soldiers 



20 THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 

both, but above all, great Trien. The real 
soul of the soldier speaks out in this letter 
from the American to the Frenchman, 
written in 1784 : "At length, my dear Mar- 
quis, I have become a private citizen on 
the banks of the Potomac; and under the 
shadow of my own vine and my own fig- 
tree, free from the bustle of the camp and 
the busy scenes of public life, I am solacing 
myself with those tranquil enjoyments, 
of which the soldier who is ever in pursuit 
of fame, the statesman whose watchful 
days and sleepless nights are spent in 
devising schemes to promote the welfare 
of his own, perhaps the ruin of other 
countries, as if this globe was insufficient 
for us all — and the courtier who is always 
watching the countenance of his prince in 
the hope of catching a gracious smile — can 
have very little conception. I have not 
only retired from all public employments. 



THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 21 

but am retiring within myself and shall 
be able to view the solitary walk, and tread 
the paths of private life with heartfelt 
satisfaction. Envious of none, I am de- 
termined to be pleased with all; and this, 
my dear friend, being the order of my 
march, I shall move gently down the stream 
of life until I sleep with my fathers." 



IV 

The scene in the world-wide drama of 
democracy shifts across the Atlantic Ocean, 
from America to France. The French 
Revolution of 1789 and the Reign of 
Terror — a century's pent-up rage against 
despotism, let loose in a single hour\ 

When Madame Roland was summoned 
before the revolutionary tribunal she came 
with a smile upon her lips, her face spark- 
ling with life and animation. Condemned 
in advance, she was falsely declared guilty 
of being the author of a "mutinous con- 
spiracy against the unity and defense of 
the republic." She heard her sentence 
calmly. "You deem me worthy the fate 
of the great men you have murdered. I 

22 



THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 23 

shall try to display the same courage on 
the scaffold." She was at once taken in a 
cart to the Place de la Revolution, a man 
guilty of treason being placed in the same 
cart. He was overwhelmed with terror 
and she occupied her time in soothing him. 
On reaching the guillotine, she bade him 
mount the steps first, that his sufferings 
might not be prolonged. As she took her 
place, her eyes fell on a colossal statue of 
Liberty, recently erected near by. "O 
Liberty," she cried, "what crimes are 
committed in thy name!" 

"There is no God." Thus in 1793, by 
solemn enactment of the Terrorists, was 
the Deity legislated out of existence. 
There is no God! What sayest thou now, 
Robespierre? Dost thou say so, now ? 
How likedst thou thy brief space of usur- 
pation? A few brief months of power — 
night and day with loaded pistols at thy 



24 THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 

side — ^no food till some one else had tasted 
from thy dish, lest it be poisoned. And 
then another scene in that same legislative 
hall, the hall of thy own great terrifying 
power. A vote ordering thy arrest! Vain 
are thy shrieks — a detachment of thy own 
soldiers forces its way into the room — a 
pistol shot rings out, and thou with shat- 
tered jaw, a ghastly spectacle, facest thy 
end. Thou fallest, and some spit upon 
thy prostrate form, others stab thee with 
their knives. Still living, thy body is 
hurried before the tribunal thou thyself 
didst form, and thence to the guillotine. 
O Robespierre, thinkest thou now there is 
a God? 

License, not liberty. Mania, not reason. 
How fared the spirit of Lafayette during 
this debauchery in the name of freedom? 



A BRIEF interval of less than ten years 
intervened between the closing scenes of 
the American Revolution and the opening 
scenes of the French Revolution. Democ- 
racy in America was a victor, and the 
republic had been established. Democ- 
racy in France was just entering upon its 
cyclonic and hideous struggle for the right 
to live. 

The government of France was at that 
time an absolute despotism. The king 
was the supreme arbiter of its destinies. 
He was the head of the army. He ap- 
pointed his own ministers, made his own 
laws, levied and raised taxes at his pleasure, 
and lavished his treasures as he pleased. 
ft5 



26 THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 

The common people were more like cattle 
than men. They tilled the ground and 
bore the* yoke; the king and the aristoc- 
racy wielded the whip. Years of suffer- 
ing ignorance for the many — years of 
riotous profligacy for the few! 

True democracy is world-wide. It 
knows no nationality. All mankind are 
its countrymen. When at the close of 
the American war Lafayette returned to 
France, he hung in his house a copy of 
the American Declaration of Independence 
upon one of the walls, leaving the corres- 
ponding space on the opposite side vacant. 
"What do you mean to place here.^" asked 
one of his friends. "A Declaration of 
Rights for France," he replied. 

Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, 
the first giant of the Hohenzollerns and the 
fountain head of modern Prussian autocracy, 
attracted by Lafayette's military reputa- 



THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 27 

tion, invited him to the royal palace at Pots- 
dam to witness and take part in the review 
of the Prussian army. At dinner one even- 
ing Frederick declared confidently his 
opinion that America would not long be a 
republic, but would return to the good old 
system. "Never, sir," replied his guest. 
"A monarchy, a nobility can never exist 
in America." "Sir," said the monarch, 
"I knew a young man who, after having 
visited countries where liberty and equality 
reigned, conceived the idea of establishing 
the same system in his own country. Do 
you know what happened to him? " "No, 
sir." "He was hanged," replied the King 
with a smile. 

In 1789 the mutterings of the coming 
storm became more ominous, but the 
King of France, deafened by the clamour 
of cackling advice from his aristocracy, 
either could not or would not hear. Al- 



28 THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 

most bankrupt because of the extravagance 
of the court, he needed money, still more 
money, and called an "assembly of not- 
ables" to assist in devising measures to 
relieve his embarrassed finances. They 
were men from the most distinguished of 
the nobility. Lafayette was one. In a 
letter to Washington he humorously re- 
marked that "wicked people called them 
not-ables." Lafayette's part in the as- 
sembly consisted in making a bold protest 
against the prodigality of the crown. 
"All the millions given up to cupidity or 
depredation," he forcefully exclaimed to 
the noble gathering, "are the fruit of the 
sweat, the tears, and perhaps the blood, of 
the nation"; and he concluded by request- 
ing that the King convoke a real National 
Assembly, made up of representatives of 
the common people. It was the beginning 
of the Revolution. For Lafayette's part 



THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 29 

in this the King's prime minister, Calonne, 
proposed to the monarch to send Lafayette 
to the Bastile. 

Nothing was accompHshed by the not- 
ables, and the monarch then decided to 
assemble the states-general. This was 
not a legislative body, but an assembly 
of representatives from the nobility, the 
clergy, and the common people, sometimes 
called by the crown when it needed assis- 
tance, the commons always being in the 
minority. The commons, le tieres etat 
grasped the opportunity, met by them- 
selves, and on June 17, 1789, resolved 
themselves into a National Assembly, to 
accomplish the regeneration of France. 

Troops were summoned by the crown 
to put down the rebellion, and more than 
fifty thousand mercenary troops from 
foreign states were engaged by the Kmg 
to take the place of the French troops, 



30 THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 

whom he distrusted. Lafayette joined 
with the National Assembly, and then 
and there proposed to it the first draft 
of that French Declaration of Rights for 
which he had prophetically left a space on 
the wall of his home. The essence of his 
draft lies in the following extract: "No 
man can be subject to any laws, excepting 
those which have received the assent of 
himself or his representatives, and which 
are promulgated beforehand and applied 
legally. The principle of all sovereignty 
resides in the nation." 

On July 14, 1789, the storm broke. 
The gigantic fortress of the Bastile which 
for ages had reared its menacing head 
among the people of Paris, a terrible 
engine of despotic military autocracy, 
was attacked and taken by the mob. M. 
De Launay, its Governor, was killed by a 
bayonet thrust, and his head cut from his 



THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 31 

body and carried through the streets upon 
a pitchfork. "And in this bloody manner, 
into those dungeons where thousands 
had wasted away, often without trial and 
with no knowledge of the charges against 
them, liberty sent her first ray of sun- 
light." 

"When oppression renders a revolution 
necessary, insurrection becomes the holiest 
of duties," was the ringing message of 
Lafayette to the Assembly. The key of 
the Bastile was given to him as the repre- 
sentative of freedom in Europe, and to- 
gether with a sketch of the ruins of that 
fortress of despotism, he sent it to George 
Washington. "It is a tribute," he wrote, 
"which I owe, as a son to my adopted 
father — as an aide-de-camp to my general 
— as a missionary of liberty to its patri- 
arch." 

A National Guard, a new army of two 



S2 THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 

hundred thousand citizen soldiers, was 
authorized and formed by the National 
Assembly, both for the protection of the 
rights of the people at home and for resist- 
ance to possible foreign aggression. La- 
fayette, now thirty-two years of age, was 
chosen its commander-in-chief. Thus was 
bom democracy in France. 



VI 

A FOREIGN peasant, from a land of 
despotic autocracy, who had just immi- 
grated to the United States, was once 
haled into one of our police courts, charged 
with almost murdering his wife with a 
club. His defense was that he now was in 
a land of liberty and he thought he could 
do what he liked. Multiply this by a 
million-fold and you have the Reign of 
Terror, the second chapter of the French 
Revolution. 

"Aime^ les amis du pewple et Venthousi- 
asme pour la libertS, mais reservez Vaveugle 
soumission pour la loi/' said Lafayette 
to the Federation of National Guards. 
The atrocities, both at the storming of the 

33 



34 THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 

Bastile and afterward, he would not 
countenance, and on more than one occa- 
sion, at the head of his armed troops, he 
enforced law and order. Finally, Austria 
and Prussia declared war upon France, 
and Lafayette was sent from Paris and at 
the head of a French army of twenty-eight 
thousand men was stationed at Sedan. 

It was inevitable that he and the Jaco- 
bins, the leaders in the mad orgy of de- 
bauched democracy that succeeded the 
initial stages of the revolution, should soon 
split. For a long time the Jacobins had 
seemed to shrink from a contest with him, 
probably because they hoped to win him 
over to their excesses. Finding him in- 
flexible, when at last they controlled the 
government, they vowed his destruction, 
and he was deprived of his command. 
They proposed that a price should be set 
upon his head and that **chaque citoyen 



THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYEtTE 35 

put courir sus'* — that is to say, that any 
one who pleased might murder him. 

Deprived of his command, and with 
destruction awaiting him in the rear, his 
only resource was flight. Even then he 
hesitated, but reason prevailed and on a 
dark and rainy night, with a few compan- 
ions on horseback, he started for Holland. 
To get there he had to pass through terri- 
tory occupied by the Austrian and Prussian 
troops. Facing the almost certain chance 
of falling in with a superior force, he de- 
termined to make a bold front, and went 
directly to the Austrian commander at 
Namur, declaring that he was a French 
officer attached to constitutional measures 
and seeking an asylum in Holland. In- 
stead of being given a passport, he was, 
when recognized, detained, given over to 
a Prussian commander, sent in a cart to 
Wesel on the Rhine and there put in a cell 



36 THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 

in irons. It was then intimated to him 
that the burden of the situation would be 
lightened if he would draw up certain plans 
to be used against France. The Prussians, 
finding that he would not do this, instead of 
treating him as a prisoner of war threw 
him into a dungeon at Magdebourg. His 
estate at home was confiscated and his wife 
imprisoned. After a year's imprisonment 
at Magdebourg in a dirty and humid vault 
he was transferred by the Prussians from 
one dungeon to another, and at last con- 
fined in the Austrian citadel of Olmutz. 

The walls of his dungeon at Olmutz were 
six feet thick and the air was admitted 
through openings two feet square secured 
at each end by massive iron bars. Before 
these loopholes was situated a broad ditch, 
which was filled with water only when it 
rained; at other times it was a stagnant 
marsh continually emitting disease; beyond 



THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 37 

this were the outer walls of the castle, so 
that the slightest breeze could never refresh 
the inmate. Each cell had two doors, one 
of iron, the other of wood nearly two feet 
thick, and both were covered with bolts, 
bars, and padlocks. When the soldiers 
twice a day brought the prisoner's wretched 
portion it was carefully examined to find 
out if there was any note or communication 
contained in it. A messy bed of rotten 
straw filled with vermin, together with a 
broken chair and an old worm-eaten table, 
formed the whole furniture of his establish- 
ment. The cell was from eight to ten 
paces long and six wide; in storms the 
water frequently flowed through the loop- 
holes; when the sun did not shine he re- 
mained almost in darkness during the 
whole day. 

He was a prisoner of war and entitled to 
be treated as such. But instead he was 



38 THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 

confined in a dungeon and was given to 
believe that he would never again see be- 
yond its four walls, that he would never 
receive news of any events or persons, that 
his name would be unknown in the citadel, 
and that in all accounts of him sent to 
Court he would be designated only by a 
number. Even knives and forks were 
denied him, and he was told that this was 
done because his situation was such as 
naturally to lead to suicide. His sufferings 
proved almost beyond his strength. The 
want of air and decent food, and the loath- 
some dampness of his dungeon brought him 
more than once to the borders of the grave. 
His frame was wasted by diseases, and 
on one occasion he was so reduced that "his 
hair fell from him entirely by the excess of 
his sufferings." 

Following a bold attempt to escape, 
the torture of his imprisonment was in- 



THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 39 

creased. Irons were securely fastened 
around his ankles. During the winter of 
1794-1795, which was extremely severe, he 
had a violent fever and almost died; he was 
deprived of proper attendance, of air, of 
suitable food, and of decent clothes; in 
this state he had nothing for his bed but a 
little damp and mouldy straw; around 
his waist was a chain which was fastened 
to the wall and barely permitted him to 
turn from one side to the other. No light 
was admitted into his cell. To increase 
his miseries, almost insupportable mental 
anguish was added to his physical suffering. 
He was made to believe that he was only 
saved for a public execution, while at the 
same time he was not permitted to know 
whether his family were still alive or had 
perished under the axe during the Reign 
of Terror. 

A Prussian statesman to whom in 1793 



40 THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 

a memorial had been addressed soliciting 
Lafayette's release is said to have replied: 
"Lafayette has too much fanaticism for 
liberty. He does not conceal it. All his 
letters prove it. If he were out of prison 
he could not remain quiet. I saw him 
when he was here and I shall always recol- 
lect one of his expressions, which surprised 
me very much at the time: 'Do you 
believe,' said he, 'that I went to x\merica 
to obtain military reputation? — it was for 
liberty I went there. He who loves liberty 
can only remam quiet after having estab- 
lished it in his own country.'" 

O liberty, hard is thy path! License 
wearing thy mask at home, and thy cham- 
pion betrayed to the dungeon of thy eternal 
foe! 



VII 

Out of the chaos rose the dictator. 
Napoleon's comet was beginning to ascend. 

Napoleon Bonaparte in 1797 was com- 
mander in Italy of the victorious army of 
the French Republic, and as such he de- 
manded of Austria that the French prisoners 
in the fortress of Olmutz be set at liberty. 
Consent was given as to the others, but 
only after much talk and grudgingly as to 
Lafayette. His unconquerable hostility 
to the reigning autocracies was too well 
known, and Austria even attempted to 
impose the terms that, if freed, Lafayette 
should be deported to America under 
promise never again to put his foot either 
in Austria or Prussia. But Lafayette 

41 



42 THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 

himself would not consent to be freed on 
these terms, and Napoleon insisted; so, 
finally, at the dictation of Napoleon Bona- 
parte, on September 19, 1797, after more 
than five years' imprisonment, Lafayette's 
fetters were knocked off and he was re- 
leased. Napoleon afterward often al- 
luded to the intense hatred of the mon- 
archs and royal cabinets of Europe for the 
democrat Lafayette. "I am sufficiently 
hated," said he one day to Lafayette, 
"by the princes and their courtiers; but 
it is nothing to their hatred for you. I 
have been so situated as to see it, and I 
could not have believed that human hate 
could go so far." 

Perhaps at no time was the spirit of 
Lafayette put to a greater test than in the 
years that followed — the years of the 
rise of imperial Napoleon, Emperor of the 
French. 



THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 43 

Revenge against his prison keepers, the 
certainty of high success, the excitement 
of a great popular cause, miHtary glory, 
gratitude to his deliverer, all coordinated 
to make him follow the path of conquest, 
and lead with Napoleon. He could have 
been one of the great military heroes of 
those times. But apparently these temp- 
tations rebounded from him as an arrow 
from a steel plate. When only a boy of 
seventeen, his noble relatives had been 
unable to conceive his refusing an honor- 
able place in royalty's household. It had 
been inconceivable to the Prussian that 
this Frenchman had not gone to America 
on a quest solely for military glory. The 
Jacobin clubs, first by fair promises and 
then by the demand for his life blood, had 
sought to force him from liberty to license, 
from real freedom to debauched freedom. 
But like Sir Galahad, the Knight of the 



44 THE SPIEIT OF LAFAYETTE 

Holy Grail, he had stood true to his quest, 
true to his ideal, true to the inward light 
that unerringly marked the real from the 
false, true to genuine democracy in its fight 
against autocracy. And now, greater than 
all these lures and tests, stood before him 
Napoleon Bonaparte, his deliverer, the 
greatest military captain of the world 
beckoning him to paths of fame. The 
sceptre of all that the professional soldier 
held dear was thrust into his hands. 
He could not be false unto himself, and 
the sceptre was turned aside. 

When he found that Napoleon was 
plotting against the democracy of France, 
that a new imperial power w^as rising in 
Napoleon's person, he deliberately broke 
off his relations with the general. During 
the days of the French conquests under 
Napoleon he lived the life of a quiet 
country gentleman, interested solely in 



THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 45 

domestic life, agriculture, and the pursuit 
of reading and science. The man who 
had staked his all in a desperate chance in 
the war of democracy against despotic 
autocracy would not raise his finger in a 
war of conquest for the aggrandizement 
of an emperor, though driven by the demon 
of revenge, drawn by the ties of gratitude, 
and enticed by the lure of glory. 



vm 

On March 1, 1815, Napoleon returned 
from Elba and began the final act in the 
great drama of his life. In a last effort to 
win Lafayette to his side, he sent his 
brother Joseph Bonaparte on a special 
mission to Lafayette with word that the 
latter's name was placed first upon Na- 
poleon's list of peers . Joseph returned with 
a refusal. "Should I ever again appear 
upon the sea of public life," Lafayette 
had replied, "it will only be as a representa- 
tive of the people." 

Waterloo! — and Napoleon, disappeared 

forever from the world drama. Then 

came back the Bourbons, first Louis 

XVin, followed by Charles X. Step by 
40 



THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 47 

step, under the Bourbon regime, autocracy 
began to regain its grip upon France. 
The year 1830 opened ominously. The 
rumblings of 1789 were again heard. The 
French Chamber of Deputies protested 
against the growing usurpations of the 
crown. The King boldly defied them, 
dissolved the Chamber, annulled the elec- 
toral laws then in force, reduced the 
number of deputies nearly one-half, and 
materially changed the conditions of suf- 
frage and representation. 

Lafayette was at his country estate, 
La Grange, when the Moniteur with a 
copy of these decrees reached him. He 
immediately set out for Paris. Revolt had 
already commenced, and war was raging in 
the streets of the city. The revolutionists 
wanted a leader and all eyes turned to 
Lafayette. He was called by acclamation 
to command the National Guard. 



48 THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 

He was now seventy-two years of age, 
but he accepted the call. Immediately 
he established his headquarters in Paris 
and passed the whole night inspecting 
barriers and preparing for a renewal of the 
battle on the morrow. At dawn it began 
again and the National Guard imder 
Lafayette drove back the royal troops and 
carried all before them. On July £9, 1830, 
the Chamber of Deputies reassembled, 
organized a provisional government, and 
formally invested Lafayette with the pow- 
ers of military dictator of France. "Lib- 
erty shall triumph," he replied in his 
letter of acceptance, "or we will perish 
together." 

Charles X, seeing the hopelessness of 
the royal cause, sent a deputation to La- 
fayette to announce the revocation of the 
obnoxious decrees and the nomination of 
a new and liberal ministry. "It is too 



THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 49 

late," Lafayette sent word back, "all 
conciliation is impossible. The royal fam- 
ily has ceased to reign." Thus ended the 
dynasty of the elder branch of the Bour- 
bons on the throne of France. The deposed 
king was allowed to pass unmolested to 
another country. 

The people who had accomplished the 
revolution, especially the citizen army, 
loudly demanded a republic with Lafayette 
for its president. Others begged him to 
mount the throne himself. But to all 
these entreaties he turned a deaf ear. 
He thought not of himself but of France 
alone. 

A constitutional monarchy, under Louis 
Phillippe, followed. It was successful at 
first, until the old, old story of attempted 
autocratic usurpation was again repeated 
by the monarch. He was forcibly ejected, 
and the Republic of 1848 was formed. 



50 THE SPIRIT OP LAFAYETTE 

But long ere this, moving gently down the 
stream of life, the journey had ended, 
and Lafayette slept with his fathers. 
Vive r esprit de Lafayette! 

"The stars shall fade away, the sun himself 
Grow dim with age, and nature sink in years. 
But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth, 
Unhurt amidst the war of elements. 
The wrecks of matter, and the crush of worlds." 



IX 

Every person has two selves, the shell 
and the real self beneath. Acts are the 
evidence of the real self. Let us hope 
what is best in the real self is eternal, for 
thus only does the world progress. 

Lafayette symbolized two great princi- 
ples of government. First, the right of a 
people to govern themselves, as opposed to 
government of the many by a self-appointed 
few — in other words, democracy as op- 
posed to autocracy. Second, a union of 
the democracies to insure mutual protec- 
tion and peace. 

When only a boy at school, he was told 
in class one day to describe a perfect 
courser, and he sacrificed his hope of 

51 



52 THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 

obtaining a premium by describing a horse 
which on perceiving the whip threw down 
his master. He adopted on his arms the 
device, ''Cur nowF"— "Why not?" Be- 
fore landing in America in 1777 he wrote 
to his wife: "I but offer my services to 
that interesting repubhc from motives of 
the purest kind, unmixed with ambition or 
private views : her happiness and my glory 
are my only incentives to the task. I hope 
that, for my sake, you will be a good Amer- 
ican, for that feeling is worthy of every 
noble heart. The happiness of America 
is intimately connected with the happiness 
of all mankind; she will become the safe 
and respected asylum of virtue, integrity, 
toleration, equality, and tranquil happi- 
ness." 

In camp at Valley Forge, January, 1778, 
he writes to his wife, who was then seek- 
ing his return: "The desire ... to 



THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 53 

promote . . . the happiness of hu- 
manity which is strongly interested in the 
existence of one perfectly free nation 
. . . forbids my departure." 

Upon a return visit to America in 1784, 
speaking to a deputation from the Penn- 
sylvania Legislature, he said: "Now that 
the great work is accomplished let us 
mutually congratulate ourselves on the 
federal union which this peace has ce- 
mented, and upon which the importance, 
the power, and the riches of this beautiful 
country rest; that union is the bond which 
will continue to preserve brotherly love 
and reciprocal friendship among the citi- 
zens of the states. I shall be happy to 
receive the command of this Republic 
at every period of my existence and in 
whatever part of the world I may be; my 
zeal for its prosperity is only equalled by 
my gratitude and respect." A statement 



54 THE SPIRIT OP LAFAYETTE 

from his reply to a special committee 
appointed by Congress to wait upon him 
shows the same feeling: "May this im- 
mense temple of freedom ever stand a 
lesson to oppressors, an example to the 
oppressed, and a sanctuary for the rights of 
mankind." 

The confederation in 1776 of the thirteen 
separate colonies of the western world 
was a union of all the then existing democ- 
racies of a hemisphere, to insure mutual 
protection and peace. Since then, democ- 
racy has been born in the Old World. In 
its common cause it knows no nationality. 
Lafayette is the symbol of its international- 
ism. In the time of our greatest stress he 
crossed the ocean to us, saying: "Now is 
precisely the moment to serve your cause." 
To-day democracy in France is bleeding to 
death. Throughout Europe, assailed in 
front by the giant of Prussian militarism 



THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 55 

and stabbed in the back by assassins con- 
ducting an insidious and treacherous peace 
propaganda, it is staggering under the com- 
bined attack. The spirit of Lafayette, the 
democrat, calls to us across that same 
ocean. The bugles of the heavens ring out. 
The days of '76 are born again. Once 
more is heard the battle-cry of the Re- 
public. Where his spirit calls, our armies 
go. And when the great work is accom- 
plished, we shall cement the union which 
he began. 



But is democracy worth preserving? 
How fares that intangible something which 
was the inspiration of this man's Hving? 
Democracy, the right of people to govern 
themselves, as opposed to their control by 
a self-appointed few — is it a failure or a 
success? Has it proved itself worth the 
dedication of this soldier spirit? 

The French, for themselves, have an- 
swered the question at the Battle of the 
Marne and at Verdun. But how about 
America? Has the great American de- 
mocracy proved a success, as compared 
with government by autocracy — for 
example, as compared with the government 
of Germany by the Prussian military 



THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 57 

autocracy, headed by the House of 
Hohenzollern? 

More than a century has passed since 
the surrender of Cornwallis. Since then 
in physical growth and material success 
the democracy of the United States has 
more than fulfilled the highest hopes. At 
that time these United States were only a 
strip along the eastern seaboard, bounded 
on the east by the Atlantic Ocean and on 
the west by an unexplored wilderness; 
thirteen sparsely settled states, the settle- 
ments widely separated from each other, 
with a population of less than four million 
persons. Now the wilderness is overcome. 
By the Louisiana Purchase we acquired 
the Great Southwest. For a pittance we 
bought the wastes of Alaska and then found 
them to be the gold fields of the world. 
The Philippines, with an area of one hun- 
dred and fifteen thousand square miles. 



58 THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 

and the Hawaiian Islands mark the ex- 
tension of our western boundaries. Cuba 
is under our immediate protection. Porto 
Rico is part of us, and likewise the Danish 
West Indies. In Central America we have 
built the Panama Canal. By the Monroe 
Doctrine we are the protectors from foreign 
interference of all of Central and South 
America. Our population has grown to 
more than one hundred million souls. 
Our material wealth is the greatest of any 
single nation in the world. 

Does this constitute success.'^ Look on 
the other side of the picture. Our form of 
national government has been notoriously 
inefficient — ^taking Germany as the stan- 
dard. Our state governments at their best 
are mediocre, while at their worst they stand 
pitifully paralyzed before mob law. Our un- 
punished lynchings of coloured people, in- 
nocent as well as guilty, make us contempt- 



THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 59 

ible in the eyes of the civilized world. No 
other government on earth remains silent 
and helpless while its citizens assemble as 
for a holiday and burn a criminal at the 
stake. Our municipalities are largely 
rotten with graft, and the graft is accom- 
panied by its inevitable handmaids, ex- 
travagance and ineflSciency. Enormous 
wealth, in the hands of a few, dwells side 
by side with extreme poverty. Our cities 
are overcrowded, and the country of 
Whittier, where 

"Shut in from all the world without 
We sat the clean-winged hearth about," 

IS handed over to the huts and shanties of 
immigrants. Capital fights labour and la- 
bour fights capital. Politics are such that 
most men avoid them. The standard of 
work is not how well you can do your job, 



60 THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 

but how much you can make out of it. Is 
this democracy a success? 

In answer to this, however, does not an 
inner consciousness in each of us, perhaps 
the spirit of Lafayette and perhaps our 
own, perhaps the whispering of an unseen, 
great, and infinite power, tell us that the 
really relevant question is not whether we 
have yet achieved success, but whether a 
successful democracy is worth striving for? 
If, however, I should be obliged to answer 
the question by "Yes" or "No" I would 
say, "Yes, it is a success!" 

The best route for the development of 
any man lies along the hard and thorny 
road of seK-development. In the end, 
self-development, by dint of hard work 
and mistakes, produces the best man, 
provided he has the courage to "see it 
through." Nations are merely big collec- 
tions of individuals. In the end this self- 



THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 61 

development produces the best nation. 
The road is filled with diflSculties, but so 
are most roads to goals that are worth 
reaching. 

Our national government may have been 
inefficient in its details, but taken as a whole 
it has created a country which for genera- 
tions has been a haven for the oppressed 
of the world. How many hundred thou- 
sand Germans have immigrated to America? 
How many Americans have ever emigrated 
to Germany.'^ We have lynchings in the 
South, but no other country was ever left a 
more hideous problem of slavery, and in 
1861 when the supreme test came the gov- 
ernment rose to it; no one but a visionary 
can expect an immediate Utopian readjust- 
ment. Our municipalities abound in graft, 
but what country before ours ever faced the 
problem of absorbing annually the enor- 
mous flood of unlettered immigrants that 



62 THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 

is unceasingly poured upon us by the Old 
World. The wonder is not that we have 
graft, but that we have not more graft. 
We have great wealth and extreme poverty, 
but they are due to imusual economic 
causes, namely: great national resources 
on the one hand, and ceaseless immigration 
on the other. Our cities are overcrowded 
and our standards of work are superficial, 
but would this be cured by a despotism? 

And always we have the hope that goes 
with liberty, the undying strength that 
accompanies the knowledge that you are 
master of your own soul. A good despot 
at the head of a military autocracy may 
for the time being make the most eJBScient 
government in the world; certainly a bad 
despot at the head of a military autocracy 
makes the worst government. But I will 
never believe that the total surrender of the 
individual to the guiding hand of a despotic 



THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 63 

autocracy makes in the end for the progress 
of the whole. History shows it to be un- 
true; the never-ceasing efforts of democ- 
racy, as endless as the waves of the sea, 
show that despotic autocracy cannot last; 
and the hell let loose upon earth by Prus- 
sian autocracy, its modern exponent, 
clinches the falsity of its creed for all but 
the intoxicated or maniacs. 



XI 

Now has arisen the Menace, the eternal 
foe of a free people, the Prussian Creed. 
The following is a composite statement of 
Prussianism: *' compiled sentence by sen- 
tence from the utterances of Prussians, the 
Kaiser and his generals, professors, editors, 
and Nietzsche, part of it said in cold blood, 
years before this war, and all of it a declara- 
tion of faith now being ratified by action." 
It is taken word for word from the eleventh 
chapter of Owen Wister's remarkable work 
"The Pentecost of Calamity,"* and is the 
most concise statement of the Menace 
that I have seen. 

"We Hohenzollerns take our crown from 
God alone. On me the Spirit of God has 

*"The Pentecost of Calamity," by Owen Wister. The 
Macmillan Company. 

64 



THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 65 

descended. I regard my whole . . . 
task as appointed by heaven. Who op- 
poses me I shall crush to pieces. Nothing 
must be settled in this world without the 
intervention ... of . . . the 
German Emperor. He who listens to 
public opinion runs a danger of inflicting 
immense harm on . . . the State. 
When one occupies certain positions in the 
world one ought to make dupes rather 
than friends. Christian morality cannot 
be political. Treaties are only a disguise 
to conceal other political aims. Remem- 
ber that the German people are the chosen 
of God. 

"Might is right and ... is de- 
cided by war. Every youth who enters 
a beer-drinking and duelling club will 
receive the true direction of his life. War 
in itself is a good thing. God will see to it 
that war always recurs. The efforts di- 



66 THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 

reeled toward the abolition of war must 
not only be termed foolish, but absolutely 
immoral. The peace of Europe is only a 
secondary matter for us. The sight of 
suffering does one good; the infliction of 
suffering does one more good. This war 
must be conducted as ruthlessly as possible. 
"The Belgians should not be shot dead. 
They should be ... so left as to 
make impossible all hope of recovery. 
The troops are to treat the Belgian civil 
population with unrelenting severity and 
frightfulness. Weak nations have not 
the same right to live as powerful . . . 
nations. The world has no longer need 
of little nationalities. We Germans have 
little esteem and less respect . . . for 
Holland. We need to enlarge our colonial 
possessions; such territorial acquisitions 
we can only realize at the cost of other 
states. 



THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 67 

"Russia must no longer be our fron- 
tier. The Polish press should be anni- 
hilated . . . likewise the French and 
Danish. . . . The Poles should be al- 
lowed . . . three privileges: to pay 
taxes, serve in the army, and shut their jaws. 
France must be so completely crushed 
that she will never again cross our path. 
You must remember that we have not 
come to make war on the French people, 
but to bring them the higher Civilization. 
The French have shown themselves decad- 
ent and without respect for the Divine 
law. Against England we fight for booty. 
Our real enemy is England. We have to 
. . . crush absolutely perfidious Al- 
bion . . . subdue her to such an ex- 
tent that her influence all over the world 
is broken forever . 

"German should replace English as the 
world language. English, the bastard 



68 THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 

tongue . . • must be swept into the 
remotest corners . . . until it has 
returned to its original elements of an in- 
significant pirate dialect. The German 
language acts as a blessing which, coming 
direct from the hand of God, sinks into the 
heart like a precious balm. To us, more 
than any other nation, is intrusted the true 
structure of human existence. Our own 
country, by employing military power, 
has attained a degree of Culture which 
it could never have reached by peaceful 
means. 

*'The civilization of mankind suffers 
every time a German becomes an Ameri- 
can. Let us drop our miserable attempts 
to excuse Germany's action. We willed it. 
Our might shall create a new law in Eu- 
rope. It is Germany that strikes. We 
are morally and intellectually superior 
beyond all comparison. . , • We must 



THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 69 

. . . fight with Russian beasts, Eng- 
lish mercenaries, and Belgian fanatics. 
We have nothing to apologize for. It is 
no consequence whatever if all the monu- 
ments ever created, all the pictures ever 
painted, all the buildings ever erected by 
the great architects of the world, be de- 
stroyed. . . . The ugliest stone placed 
to mark the burial of a German grenadier 
is a more glorious monument than all the 
cathedrals of Europe put together. No 
respect for the tombs of Shakespeare, 
Newton, and Faraday. 

"They call us barbarians. What of it.^^ 
The German claim must be: . . . Ed- 
ucation to hate . . . Organization of 
hatred . . . Education to the desire 
for hatred. Let us abolish unripe and 
false shame. . . . To us is given faith, 
hope, and hatred; but hatred is the greatest 
among them." 



70 THE SPIRIT OP LAPAYETTE 

The German war code, introduction, 
paragraph three, reads as follows: "A war 
conducted with energy cannot be directed 
mere/y against the combatants of the en- 
emy state, and the positions which they oc- 
cupy, but will in like manner seek to destroy 
the total intellectual and material re- 
sources of the latter." 



XII 

We are at war. On April 6, 1917, 
the democracy of the United States of 
America formally declared war against 
the autocracy of Germany. What are 
we fighting for.^ 

Two brutes in the shape of men engage 
in a savage, drunken brawl. Bloody, 
cursing, dishevelled, with swollen and dis- 
torted features, and screaming their ana- 
themas of drunken hate, they fight with 
the ferocity of beasts. Beasts they are. 

A bully, a degenerate, a thug of the 
city, a brigand of the coimtry, a horse thief 
of the western plains, attacks a weaker 
and unprepared victim. A man with red 
blood in his veins sees the assault, and 

71 



72 THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 

attacks the attacker with strength enough 
to save the victim, arrest the disturber of 
the peace, and prevent a repetition of the 
offense. He has been engaged in a fight, 
but he is not a beast. 

The spirit of Lafayette brought him to 
America to fight for democracy; he was a 
hard fighter but he was not a beast. And 
now, against that calculating and brutal 
power which with the treachery of a tiger 
of ^the jungle and all the devilish ingenuity 
of the highest Kultur has assaulted the 
peace of the world, the armies of America 
are led by the spirit of Lafayette. 

For years the Prussian military autoc- 
racy has been preparing for the leap upon 
its victim. The power to declare war has 
been kept solely and exclusively in the 
hands of the military autocracy. It is 
responsible to no one. The great mass 
of people must do as they are commanded; 



THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 73 

obeying, not laws made by themselves 
acting through their duly-elected represen- 
tatives, but orders promulgated by a 
self-appointed few, the military autoc- 
racy of Prussia. Woe to the unfortu- 
nate victim who refuses to obey! With 
cold-blooded deliberation this military 
autocracy which controls the German 
people has for years been preparing its 
huge fighting machine. When the time to 
strike came, when the neighbouring coun- 
tries were least prepared to resist, Ger- 
many was deluged with the lie that the 
German nation was attacked, the scrap 
of paper otherwise called a treaty was 
torn up, and the tiger sprang. The world 
knows the result. 

We enter the war for two motives, one 
to preserve the democracies of Europe, the 
other for our own preservation. The sink- 
ing of our ships by submarines was merely 



74 THE SPIKIT OF LAFAYETTE 

the immediate cause, the match that lit 
the fire, just as the firing on Fort Sumter 
was the proximate but not the real cause 
of our Civil War. The real cause of our 
Civil War was, as Lincoln said, because this 
nation "could not endure half slave and 
half free." The real cause of the present 
World War is because civilization cannot 
endure half military autocracy and half 
free democracy. "The world must be 
made safe for democracy." We fight to 
save the intended victims of Prussianism, 
to arrest the disturber of the peace, and 
prevent a repetition of the offense. 

The President of the United States in 
his great message, delivered in the Con- 
gress of the United States on the second 
day of April, 1917, in which he advised 
the Congress to accept the status of belli- 
gerent thrust upon us by the acts of the 
Imperial Government of Germany in un- 



THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 75 

lawfully sinking our ships and killing our 
citizens, said: "Let us be very clear, and 
make very clear to all the world what our 
motives and our objects are. . . . Our 
object . . . is to vindicate the princi- 
ples of peace and justice in the life of the 
world as against selfish and autocratic 
power and to set up amongst the really 
free and self -governed peoples of the world 
such a concert of purpose and of action 
as will henceforth ensure the observance 
of those principles. Neutrality is no longer 
feasible or desirable where the peace of the 
world is involved and the freedom of its 
peoples, and the menace to that peace 
and freedom lies in the existence of auto- 
cratic governments backed by organized 
force which is controlled wholly by their 
will, not by the will of their people. . . . 
"We are now about to accept gauge of 
battle with this natural foe to liberty and 



76 THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 

shall, if necessary, spend the whole force 
of the nation to check and nullify its pre- 
tentions and its power. . . . The 
world must be made safe for democracy. 
Its peace must be planted upon the tested 
foundations of poUtical Hberty. We have 
no selfish ends to serve. Vse desire no 
conquest, no dominion. We seek no in- 
demnities for ourselves, no material com- 
pensation for the sacrifices we shall freely 
make. We are but one of the champions 
of the rights of mankind. We shall be 
satisfied when those rights have been made 
as secure as the faith and the freedom of 
nations can make them.'* 



xni 

We are at war with the Menace. It is 
the same Menace — ^now grown to a monster 
with four heads dominated by one brain — 
that over a hmidred years ago in\'ited 
Lafayette to its palace at Potsdam ?= to 
re\'iew the Prussian anny, and then 
c\Tiically suggested to him an end upon the 
scaffold. It is the same Menace, now from 
its four mouths spitting its spume of hate 
upon a chaotic world, that thrust the body 
of the champion of democracy into a dun- 
geon, but could not kill his soul. Our 
present war against this creature of e\'il is 
but one more act in the drama begun by 
the spirit of Lafayette. 

How shall this act end? Listen to this. 



78 THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 

I quote largely from Andre Cheradame, a 
man who deals not in platitudes and con- 
ceits to tickle the vanity of a nation, but 
in cold, hard facts. 

In 1914, when the war began, Prussian 
militarism controlled Germany, with a 
population of sixty-eight millions; and 
Germany had one ally, Austria-Hungary, 
of whose thirty million people a majority 
were directly antagonistic to Berlin. By 
the spring of 1915 it had extended and 
organized its power among these thirty 
million Austro-Hungarians, who imtil that 
time had taken orders from their own 
independent military chiefs. In the fall 
of 1915 it joined hands with Bulgaria and 
Turkey over the corpse of Serbia. Thus, 
since the beginning of the war, has been 
formed the Quadruple Alhance, dominated 
by Prussian militarism. 

This alliance, or Prussia before the alii- 



THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 79 

ance was completed, has since the beginnmg 
of the war seized Belgium, Poland, Serbia, 
Albania, Montenegro, part of France, and 
most of Roumania. The population now 
controlled by Prussian militarism is about 
one hundred and seventy - five million 
people. The economic resources controlled 
by it show a corresponding increase. 
Before the war began, Prussia planned for a 
Pan-Germanism of this nature, and this 
plan has now been almost completed. 

If Prussia can now, by granting preten- 
tious but ineffective political reforms to 
its own people and by fighting a defensive 
war until the contest becomes a deadlock, 
hold this Pan-Germany in its present posi- 
tion, then after peace has been declared 
it can organize this vast additional strength 
in man power and resources which it has 
gained, can Prussianize this additional 
one hundred million, can, by the same 



80 THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 

intrigue which it has used in the past, 
undermine during this period of peace 
the internal defensive effectiveness of the 
democracies, and when the time comes 
can strike again. And if the democracies 
are unable to win now, what chance will 
they have then? 

Drop the scales from our eyes and look 
clearly at the facts, hard as they are. The 
Menace has been fighting a winning fight. 
By merely keeping a deadlock for the rest 
of the war, and forcing a truce under the 
guise of peace, the Menace will win; pro- 
vided, however, that it is not expelled by 
the German people themselves. This is 
the strength — and the weakness — of the foe 
against which we have declared war. 

The Prussian looks a long way ahead. 
M. Cheradame, in his work, "Le Complot 
Pan-Germaniste Demasque," recites the 
following incident: **In 1898, before Ma- 



THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 81 

nila, the German Rear-Admiral von Goet- 
zen, a friend of the Kaiser, said to the 
American Admiral Dewey, *In about 
fifteen years my country will begin a great 
war. . . . Some months after we have 
done our business in Europe we shall take 
New York and probably Washington, and 
we shall keep them for a time. . . . 
We shall extract one or two billions of 
dollars from New York and other towns.' " 
The months referred to by the German 
sailor may be turned into years, and the 
one or two billions may be multiplied by 
ten — but the Prussian looks a long way 
ahead. 



XIV 

How can our rights and the rights of 
mankind to which the President has alluded 
be made secure? What definite concrete 
facts must be established in order that 
democracy may be made safe? 

In the first place, the autocratic power 
that now puts terror into the heart of the 
world must be broken beyond repair. 
The Hohenzollems and the rest of the 
military caste which now controls Ger- 
many must be poHtically exterminated. 
No pretended or half-way internal political 
reforms, leaving a road for their return 
to power, will be sufficient. Annihilate 
the Menace. The cancer must be cut out, 
with no roots left in the body politic 



THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 83 

to spread its hideous disease again. Make 
an effective job of it once for all. We 
want no chance, under the cloak of peace, 
for the return of this monster. 

"The time has come to conquer or sub- 
mit," wrote President Wilson shortly 
after our declaration of war. It is true. 
Can any one doubt what would have 
happened to the United States of America 
if Prussian autocracy had dictated terms 
of peace to vanquished Allies and as part 
of those terms had taken over the allied 
fleet and obtained territory in Canada.'^ 
Or can any one doubt what will now hap- 
pen to all the democracies if the present 
Pan-Germany, now existing by means of 
Prussian victories in this war, is during the 
next ten years consolidated, organized, 
Prussianized — and then, a fighting machine 
twice as powerful as the machine of 1914, 
hurled agamst the democracies? With 



84 THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 

an army of seven or eight million men 
trained to the hour, with equipped reserves 
of ten or twelve million more, with a com- 
plete network of military railroads cap- 
able of concentrating the units of this 
engine of destruction wherever military 
strategy shall designate, and with aero- 
planes and transatlantic submarines in 
proportion, what chance wiU the democ- 
racies have? 

In the second place, it ought to be very 
clear that future power and prosperity 
on the part of the plain people of Germany 
will be no bar to securing our rights, pro- 
vided, however, that this power and pros- 
perity is not owned and controlled by 
Prussian autocracy so that it can again be 
forced into a huge fighting machine to 
put the rest of the world in terror. The 
spirit of Lafayette, although its fight 
against such masters is eternal, will not 



THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 85 

lead in a war of conquest or annihilation 
against the German people. 

**We have no quarrel with the German 
people," said the President of the United 
States in his message of April 2, 1917. 
" We have no feeling toward them but one 
of sympathy and friendship. It was not 
upon their impulse that their government 
acted in entering this war. It was not 
with their previous knowledge or approval. 
It was a war determined upon as wars used 
to be determined upon in the old, unhappy 
days when peoples were nowhere consulted 
by their rulers and wars were provoked 
and waged in the interest of dynasties or 
of little groups of ambitious men who were 
accustomed to use their fellowmen as 
pawns and tools." It was a war deter- 
mined upon by the same Menace that 
thrust the democrat Lafayette into a 
dungeon, and which so hated democracy 



86 THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 

that when compelled to release him it 
attempted to impose terms that he should 
be deported to America, never again to 
place foot on Prussian or Austrian soil. 

The corollary of this is that the best 
security for the rights of democracy is the 
establishment of a republic in Germany. 
A real republic, not a sham one. This is 
the one definite, concrete fact which would 
make the world safer for its peoples. 

When will the German people see the 
light? When will there be a government of 
the people of Germany, for the people, and 
by the people? The shades of her dead, 
led to the slaughter by a merciless and 
heartless autocracy in a needless war, cry 
out for it. What say you, you men of 
Germany? Among you are men whose 
souls are brave and strong and true, an 
unnumbered host. How long, slaves, will 
you bend your backs to the lash of your 



THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 87 

military masters? They lied to you and 
made you believe the Fatherland was at- 
tacked, and led you, dupes, into a war of 
conquest. Your modern Pilate, in his 
blasphemous pride, with the name of God 
upon his lips and the blood of innocents 
upon his hands, is now crucifying Freedom 
upon his cross of iron. But the day of the 
resurrection will come; and how will your 
record stand then? Awake, ye free of 
Germany! When shall you come into 
your own? 

Every hour that the coming of such 
a republic is shortened means just so 
much less agony for the peoples of the 
world. There is no better pledge for the 
safety of democracy. "Self -governed na- 
tions," said the President of the United 
States in the message referred to above, 
"do not fill their neighbour states with 
spies or set the course of intrigue to bring 



88 THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 

about some critical posture of affairs which 
will give them an opportunity to strike 
and make conquest. Such designs can be 
successfully worked out only under cover 
and where no one has the right to ask 
questions. Cunningly contrived plans of 
deception or aggression, carried, it may be, 
from generation to generation, can be 
worked out and kept from the light only 
within the privacy of courts or behind the 
carefully guarded confidences of a narrow 
and privileged class. They are happily 
impossible where public opinion commands 
and insists upon full information concern- 
ing all the nation's affairs." 



XV 

What else? The union. The final act 
in the world-wide drama of democracy. 
The union of the democracies of the world 
to insure mutual protection and peace. I 
mean a union for this purpose of all 
those governments where the people, by 
their representatives, control. The union 
on two hemispheres of what the spirit of 
Lafayette foresaw, symbolized, and battled 
for on both. 

The union ought to include the Austrian 
and German people themselves. It can 
never, however, include the Prussian mil- 
itary autocracy or any other military 
autocracy. I quote again from the Presi- 
dent's message: "A steadfast concert 



90 THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 

for peace can never be maintained except 
by a partnership of democratic nations. 
No autocratic government could be trusted 
to keep faith within it or observe its 
covenants. It must be a league of honour, 
a partnership of opinion. Intrigue would 
eat its vitals away; the plottings of inner i 
circles who could plan what they would 
and render account to no one would be a 
corruption seated at its very heart. Only 
free peoples can hold their purpose and 
their honour steady to a common end and 
prefer the interests of mankind to any 
narrow interest of their own. . . . 
One of the things that has served to con- 
vince us that the Prussian autocracy was 
not and could never be our friend is that 
from the very outset of the present war 
it has filled our unsuspecting communities 
and even our oflSces of government with 
spies, and set criminal intrigues everywhere 



THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 91 

afoot against our national unity of counsel, 
our peace within and without, our indus- 
tries, and our commerce. Indeed it is now 
evident that its spies were here even before 
the war began; and it is unhappily not a 
matter of conjecture, but a fact proved 
in our courts of justice, that the intrigues 
which have more than once come peril- 
ously near to disturbing the peace and 
dislocating the industries of the country 
have been carried on at the instigation, 
with the support, and even under the per- 
sonal direction of official agents of the 
Imperial Government accredited to the 
Government of the United States." 

The imion must be a union to keep the 
future safe against war, a league to compel 
every nation after the close of the present 
war to settle any claim it may have against 
its neighbour in the same way that individ- 
uals settle their disputes — ^by rules of right 



92 THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 

and reason instead of by the law of might. 
It must be "some definite concert of power 
that will make it virtually impossible that 
any such catastrophe should ever over- 
whelm us again." In a memorable ad- 
dress to the Senate of the United States 
on January 22, 1917, the President urged 
that the United States enter into such a 
league after the close of the present war, and 
on the point of effectiveness said: "Mere 
agreements may not make peace secure. 
It will be absolutely necessary that a force 
be created, as a guarantor of the perma- 
nency of the settlement, so much greater 
than the force of any nation now engaged 
or any alliance hitherto formed or pro- 
jected, that no nation, no probable com- 
bination of nations, could face or withstand 
it. If the peace presently to be made is 
to endure it must be a peace made secure 
by the organized major force of mankind." 



XVI 



''Cur 7i07iF"~"Why not?" The union 
of the democracies will be the culmin- 
ation of the world-wide drama begun by 
the spirit of Lafayette. 

Jesus Christ, nineteen hundred years ago 
in his Sermon on the Mount, said to the 
wonderingmultitude:**For verily I say unto 
you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot or 
one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, 
till all be fulfilled." Since then, as sure 
and certain as the evolution of time itself, 
the evolution of the law has been toward 
such a union. 

"God's ways seem dark, but soon or late 
They touch the shining hills of day; 
The evil cannot brook delay. 
The good can well afford to wait. 
93 



94 THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 

Give ermined kings their hour of crime, 
Ye have the future grand and great 
The safe appeal of truth to time." 

Year has followed year and century has 
followed century, and through it all, 
surely, slowly, often torn and twisted out 
of shape but always growing, evolving, 
moving onward, the law has followed the 
safe appeal of truth to time, toward this 
great goal. One jot or one tittle shall in 
no wise pass from it till all be fulfilled. It 
is the spirit of Lafayette that leads. It 
was he who saw "the glory of the coming 
of the Lord." He saw fulfilled in fact the 
union of the separate democracies on one 
hemisphere; his spirit sees the vision of 
their union on two. 

Gaze for a moment on what this soldier 
spirit has looked down upon in the past and 
on the vision of what it sees for the future. 

Centuries ago individual man settled 



THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 95 

all his disputes with individual man by 
fighting. It was the primitive method. 
There was no law : might made right. The 
spirit saw savage primeval force, uncon- 
quered, untaught, powerful and brutal 
in the wanton exercise of its strength. 

Then, under the safe appeal of truth to 
time, there gradually evolved, as between 
man and man, the method of voluntary 
submission to a judicial tribunal. Twisted 
and gnarled was this growth however, for 
even under Anglo-Saxon law the right of 
trial by battle was jealously guarded, and 
lasted for many years. A noble knight 
charged with an offense could always de- 
mand trial by battle; and if he succeeded in 
running through the body or otherwise 
disabling the man who made the accusa- 
tion, he thereby established his own in- 
nocence and was acquitted by the court. 
This also the spirit saw. 



96 THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 

Then gradually force was conquered, 
tamed, and used; and there evolved the 
modern court backed by the harnessed 
force of the community — backed by force 
sufficient to compel individual man to 
settle his disputes in court instead of by 
fighting, and if he refused and chose to 
fight, sufficient to compel him to desist 
and to punish him for his attempt. Force, 
a human Niagara, wild from the beginning, 
now controlled and directed by a higher 
law. Imagine the modern courts of our 
cities and states without the backing of 
organized force — courts and judges and 
rules of judicial procedure with no force to 
support them, and each individual in the 
community vested with the option in 
case of a dispute with a neighbour to settle 
that dispute by attacking the neighbour! 
We should have anarchy within six months. 

WTiat about nations? What has the 



THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 97 

spirit seen there? For nations are merely 
large collections of individuals. The same 
law of evolution governs both. 

The first and primitive method of settling 
disputes between nations, and for a long 
time the only one, was war; and this the 
spirit beheld. Then gradually evolved 
the method of voluntary submission to a 
judicial tribunal such as the tribunal now 
existing at The Hague, each nation retain- 
ing, however, its right of trial by battle. 
The next method, the vision of the future, 
the new internationalism of which the 
living Lafayette was the symbol, is the 
harnessing of the united force of the peoples 
of the world, the union of the democracies 
to enforce the peace of the world. It is a 
vision of the union to form a modem court 
backed by force trained to obey the higher 
law, backed by force suflScient to compel 
nations to settle their disputes in court 



98 THE SPIRIT OP LAFAYETTE 

instead of by fighting. It is a vision of the 
war ogre, who has for centuries ravaged the 
world, at last shackled and bound; of the 
monster who with bloody claws and fangs 
has torn, ripped, and murdered his victims 
by the million, at last overcome; a vision 
of this evil brute of war conquered, and of 
primeval force trained, civilized, and forg- 
ing the chains to hold this devil of hell. 



V 



XVII 

Did that Indian warrior who met La- 
fayette in the American wilderness speak 
more wisely than he knew? Were the 
footsteps of this soldier of France directed 
by the Great Spirit? Who can tell! 

This must be the last war. We shall 
not hand down to our children this heritage 
of calamity. Our Revolutionary War set- 
tled for all time the independence of these 
United States of America. The Civil War 
settled for all time the question of slavery 
in this hemisphere. This war must and 
shall settle for all time the question of 
military autocratic domination of the 
world. " The time has come to conquer or 
submit." 

99 



100 THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 

And if after we have checked and curbed 
this natural foe to liberty there shall arise a 
concert of the powers of the world, a 
world-wide union to insure and enforce 
future peace, a union based not merely on 
treaty obligations which may be avoided, 
or on a contract which may be broken, 
but on a wide understanding and realiza- 
tion that organized democracy must in the 
future act concertedly as the police of the 
world — then by just so much as we make 
posterity safe, the awful sacrifice will not 
have been made in vain. 

We build for posterity. "Citr non ?" — 
"Why not?" It is the spirit of Lafayette 
that calls. And with the call we hear 
from the heavens the chant of a mighty 
chorus, singing not the hymn of hate but 
the paean of peace on earth, good-will to- 
ward men. 

Those who do not know us gibe at us and 



I 

THE SPIRIT OF LAFAYETTE 101 

throw our sins in our teeth. But this 
i mightiest of democracies is at last awaken- 
ji ing, is casting out the evil genii of opu- 
j lence, is girding on its sword for the great 
work. Soldier of freedom, thou camest 
I to us in the time of our greatest need. 
"Now," thou saidst, "is precisely the 
moment to serve your cause." Symbol 
of the united democracies of the world, 
symbol of a union which will make the 
earth safe for its peoples, symbol of a 
union of peace, we are led by thy spirit. 
We fight for democracy; we build for pos- 
terity. 

And the rain descended, and the floods 
came, and the winds blew, and heat upon 
that house; and it fell not; for it was 
founded upon a rock. 




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